


In-Love Mac

by avulle



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Crack, F/M, Post S4, also a giant heaping pile of nonsense, bi mac, s4 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:54:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24873388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avulle/pseuds/avulle
Summary: So Riley and Mac are alone on that honestly-kinda-nasty couch he has.They’re talking about Boze and Desi and Mac is kinda strutting his shit about something or other, and she remembers when Boze pegged Mac and Desi as a thing like, three months in advance.And him being like “we don’t need Mac off his game, you don’t know how he is when he’s in love”.She tells Mac this, needles him a bit, get him off that high horse, and.Well, what she doesn’t expect is for him to cough a laugh, and say—“Boze wouldn’t know in-love Mac if it bit him in the ass.”
Relationships: Riley Davis/Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 50





	In-Love Mac

**Author's Note:**

> So I watched MacGyver over the last week entirely because [someone](https://andyouweremine.tumblr.com/) I follow shipped MacRiley something fierce. Well, I really liked the show, and also the MacRiley appears to have been contagious, so here we are.
> 
> The idea of a bi Mac wormed its way into my brain, and like, refused to let me go, and just, there was much nonsense I could do with it, so here we are. If I wasn't a coward, this would be a Mac/Jack fic (maybe someday), but I am a coward, so here we are.
> 
> I miss Jack. I like Desi a lot, but I still miss Jack.

So Riley and Mac are alone on that honestly-kinda-nasty couch he has.

Two beers in, and just the right amount of stupid.

Daydrinking, because like.

Desi’s out on a solo mission they’re not read into, and Boze is out with a new girlfriend.

They’re talking about Boze and Desi and Mac is kinda strutting his shit about something or other, and she remembers when Boze pegged Mac and Desi as a thing like, three months in advance.

And him being like “we don’t need Mac off his game, you don’t know how he is when he’s in love”.

She tells Mac this, needles him a bit, get him off that high horse, and.

Well, what she doesn’t expect is for him to cough a laugh, and say—

“Boze wouldn’t know in-love Mac if it bit him in the ass.”

She laughs, because they’re two beers in and it’s that kind of day, except—

Wait.

Riley’s not crazy, right?

That means what she thinks it means, right?

She stops laughing and Mac stops laughing and they just kinda look at each while color rises higher and higher in his cheeks.

Fuck!

Riley bursts out laughing.

“No shit!” she says.

Mac shakes his head, starts trying to deny it, but he’s a terrible fucking liar.

Except, apparently, about this!

Which he has hid for the duration of their relationship!

“You and Boze?”

He looks away, and then looks back at her, takes a long swig of his beer, and then leans in with a doofus MacGyver smile.

“I’ve never understood why you didn’t go for it.”

She laughs.

“How can—How did I never know? You can’t keep a secret to save your life!”

“First, I’m great at keeping secrets.”

He takes a swig and ignores her psssh.

“And second, I—” he hesitates, and his smile falters.

“To be clear, man, I totally support you,” she rushes out, because like, maybe she should have started with that?

He grins a soft little Mac grin at that, and like.

It’s not like she  _ means _ to say it.

She’s a supportive friend?

But like.

Come on.

_ Boze? _

“Even if you have terrible taste in men.”

He crows in laughter.

“What?” he says, hand on her shoulder, heavy and warm and soft and —

Look, whatever.

“So my type is men who love me unconditionally, what’s wrong with that?”

She pshes.

She has a witty retort on the tip of her tongue when she thinks of.

Another man who loves Mac unconditionally.

“Mac,” she says.

Their eyes meet, and there is understanding there.

“Mac, tell me you are not in love with Jack.”

“I’m not—”

“Oh my God, how do you have such horrible taste in men.”

He twitches his eyebrows at her.

“Have you seen Jack with his shirt off, Riles?”

Unfortunately, yes!

“Gross!”

He shakes his head.

“The Westermarck effect is an incredible thing,” he says.

She gives him, because they both know she has no idea what that means.

Although, like.

She can guess from context.

“It’s actually really interesting, it’s been confirmed not to be a biological connection because of Israeli Kibbutzim, who—”

“Mac.”

“It’s the biological underpinning of the incest taboo.”

She makes a face, and he chuckles.

“Alternatively, it’s the reason the idea of Jack naked is so gross to you.”

She groans, tries to take a swig of her beer, and finds it empty.

Mac cracks another one open with a weird tool he scraped together when she got here.

Like, Mac.

You have a swiss army knife on you at all times.

It comes with a can-opener.

Why did you need to take apart your lamp to make one?

She didn’t ask.

She takes a swig.

“So you’re bi?”

“Yep,” he says.

“Huh.”

There’s an awkward silence.

“How about you?”

“Uh, no. Like, experimented a bit in college, but uhh, nope.”

“Huh.”

More awkward silence.

It becomes too much for Riley and she turns to him.

“How did I not know about this?”

“I uhh, didn’t tell you?”

Riley shakes her head.

“You’re terrible at keeping secrets.”

“I’m great at keeping secrets,” he lies, for the second time that afternoon.

She takes a swig, which he mirrors.

She definitely doesn’t watch the glorious length of his neck as he swallows.

That’s the neck of a man who thinks Jack Dalton is attractive.

Keep your head in the game, Riley.

“Also,” he hesitates again. “It’s…”

She sets her hand on his shoulder.

He twitches a smile at her.

“I grew up in a small town in Minnesota, Riles. It wasn’t a great place to be gay.”

At her look, he corrects himself.

“My first crush was on Boze, and I thought I was gay until I was fifteen.”

“Darlene.”

He nods.

“I wanted to just be—uhh, be straight. Oh, that sounds so bad.”

“It doesn’t.”

He gives her a look.

She shrugs.

“So when he mentioned me going crazy for her, I was really trying to run away from how I felt about him. I thought if like, I went out with her, I’d forget.”

“Did you?”

He shakes his head.

“When we were kids, Boze was… he was everything to me. We’re best friends now, but back then, he was my whole world.”

She nods. She’s heard the stories.

She doesn’t remember anyone else in any of the stories.

“And back then, in that town. Five years above uh, there were two guys who caught kissing under the bleachers, and what that town did to them—”

He looks away.

She rubs his shoulder.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

He shakes his head.

“No, it’s not that.” He turns to her, smiles one of his stupid Mac smiles at her. “It’s nice, actually. I never thought about this as a secret, but you’re right. I was keeping it a secret.”

“And you’re terrible at secrets.”

He makes a fake frown at her.

“And  _ I don’t like _ keeping secrets.”

She pshes at him, and he smiles.

He takes her hand from his shoulder and holds it in both of his.

Because MacGyver is a platonic hand holder.

Because he’s a fucking menace.

“Is that why you burned down that football field?”

His eyes crinkle in the corners as he smirks at her.

“That was an accident,” he lies.

“Uh-huh, just like how I accidentally hacked into my dickwad principal’s computer and leaked all of the pictures he had with his mistress to every parent in town?”

“Yeah,” he agrees, squeezing her hand (menace). “Just like that.”

They stare into each other’s eyes—

And by that Riley means that he stares into her eyes, which makes it impossible for her to look away.

“Grandpa did right by me, but he was—” Mac shakes his head “—and if I told Boze and lost him I’d be totally alone. I was planning to tell him on graduation, but we barely had five minutes together, and it was all in front of his parents, and I lost my nerve.”

His thumb traces over the back of her hand, because fucking.

Christ.

She does her best to make her supportive face.

And not her  _ how about you put those fingers somewhere more useful _ face.

“Anyways, we went to different colleges, at least partially so I could sort myself out, and then I dropped out, and you wouldn’t think the military would be the place where I finally came to terms with my bisexuality, but—”

He laughs and shrugs.

He gestures with one hand, but the other hand is still around hers.

It’s a damp sort of hand-hold.

But Riley would like to make it 100% clear that her hand isn’t sweaty.

Riley’s hands never sweat.

It’s clearly MacGyver.

(A man whose life regularly depends on having dry hands.)

“Pena was one hell of a CO. He walked me through it. He was totally straight, so I don’t know where he got it from, but it was the first time someone told me being bi was okay, and—”

She sees the tears well up in the corner of her eyes and she squeezes her hand tight around his.

MacGyver recovers.

“I was ready to go home, tell Boze how I felt about him, and then—”

“And then you met Jack.”

He nods, lips pinched together.

“Love at first sight is a total fallacy, but Riles—”

“Gross.”

He laughs.

“The way he looked at me, Riles.”

“Didn’t you say he hated you when you first met.”

“Oh, but the way he hated me.”

She takes the excuse to pull her hand from his, and repeats herself.

“Gross.”

He laughs again, pulls his beer up, and downs half of it in one go.

“And after that, it just sort of became a habit, to hide it. I didn’t want to tell Boze, because ‘I’m bi, and also I used to be in love with you’ felt so tacky. And then I was so close to Jack, and telling someone else I was bi without telling him felt all wrong, and…”

He drifts off.

Takes another swig of his beer.

“You never told Jack how you feel?”

“You know Jack.”

Riley did.

“What are you trying to say, Mac?”

“He’s the straightest guy I’ve ever known.”

“No offense, Mac?” she says, twisting to make sure she’s meeting his eyes. “But that’s bullshit.”

She’d know.

She’s an expert on bad excuses to not tell someone you’re in love with how you feel.

_ They’re in a relationship with someone else. _

_ You don’t have a chance. _

_ You don’t want to ruin your relationship. _

_ You’re best friends. _

_ You’re not really in love with him, you just have a thing for brilliant sensitive men with abs made of cast iron. _

_ Look at that floppy hair. How can you be in love with someone who’s got such floppy hair. _

Their eyes meet, and then he smiles faintly and nods, running his hands through his hair.

It falls back into his face immediately, in just all of the right ways.

“Maybe he just hasn’t met the right guy yet,” she tacks on.

Mac laughs at that, holds out his beer bottle to clink against hers.

“Maybe I should have told him,” he says.

The past tense of his sentence irritates her.

She dials Jack’s sat phone number into her phone, and sets it onto his lap.

He looks down at it, and then twitches an eyebrow at her.

“No pressure, but y’know.” She shrugs. “No time like the present?”

Because obviously telling MacGyver to confess his love for someone else is something she should be encouraging.

He takes another drink, and she matches him.

“If he gives you shit about it, I’ll beat his ass for you.”

Mac smiles.

“You’d do that for me?”

_ I’d do anything for you _ , she doesn’t say.

Then, she reconsiders.

“I’d do anything for you,” she says.

A slow, genuine smile spreads across his face.

“Me too,” he says.

He takes his hand in hers, taps the call button, and lifts the phone to his ear.

“ _ Hey honey, it’s been too long! _ ” Jack says, bellowing loud enough she can hear him as plainly as if he were on speaker.

“Hey Jack,” Mac says, and there is a moment of almost intolerable softness on his face.

“ _ Shit, man, you surprised me! It’s nice to hear your voice, what are you doing calling me on Riley’s phone? _ ”

“She was the one who told me to call you, actually.”

“ _ Well, in that case, she deserves a big old thank you. Why don’t you ever call, man? _ ”

Mac chuckles, and Jack continues.

“ _ Hey Riley! _ ” he shouts. “ _ Can you hear me? _ ”

She leans forward as Mac pulls the phone away from his ear with a grimace.

“I can hear you, Jack,” she says, her voice so fucking level, like her breasts aren’t like an inch from Mac’s chest. Which, she knows from experience, is just.

Very firm.

Very strong.

“ _ Way to go! Great job, honey!” _

She laughs, and leans a bit on Mac’s chest.

It is, as remembered.

Very firm.

Very strong.

Also warm.

Just a little bit soft.

Yeah.

Riley could spend her whole life here.

Mac raises the phone back to his ear.

Riley begrudgingly backs away from Mac’s chest.

“Sorry I haven’t been calling.”

“ _ Yeah, I hear you’ve been busy. Something about a nuke trying to cover the earth in radioactive smoke? _ ”

“That’s not what they were trying to do.”

“ _ Whatever, man. What’s up? _ ”

“There was something I wanted to tell you.”

Mac’s hand tightens around hers.

“ _ Hit me up, man. We’re stuck in this horrible little town in Chile, and the internet is total ass. I’m freezing my balls off and dying of boredom at the same time _ .”

“I’m—”

Mac hesitates, swallows.

For once, Jack is silent.

Mac’s hand is painfully tight around hers, and she does her best to return it.

“I’m bi,” Mac says.

There is what feels like an eternity of silence, and Riley simultaneously regrets all of her life choices and also tries to think of the most creatively horrible way to destroy Jack’s Bruce Willis collection.

“ _ No shit, man _ ,” Jack says, his voice quite a bit quieter than the last time he spoke.

“No shit,” Mac confirms, and the vice around Riley’s hand eases.

“ _ I’m uhh, _ ” Jack hesitates, “ _ happy for you? Is that the right thing to say? _ ”

Mac laughs.

“Something like that,” he says.

“ _ Man, how did I not notice? I bet you were getting all the dude-tail behind my back, weren’t you? _ ”

Riley pshes, but Mac actually smirks.

(Riley decides to file Mac smirking in the large file folder in her brain that she turns to when she’s having a long, lonely night.)

“Remember Belarus?”

Pause.

“ _ No _ .”

Mac laughs.

“ _ Are you kidding me, man? That’s where you were? We almost got shot out of the sky because you were late to the drop point! _ ”

Mac laughs again, full-bellied and long.

“You should have seen the way he was looking at me, Jack.”

“ _ I took a bullet to the thigh, man! _ ”

Mac laughs again, and then Jack’s laughing to.

“ _ If that was me, you would have given me no end of shit _ ,” Jack says, still laughing under his breath.

“I would have,” Mac agrees.

“ _ You dog _ ,” Jack says.

Mac chuckles again.

The sight of him, looking so wide-eyed and free, makes her heart twist in her chest.

She looks down at his hand in hers, where his stupid thumb is working its way over the back of her hand.

See:

Put that thumb somewhere more useful, MacGyver.

Riley pushes open her laptop on the coffee table to distract herself, listening to the conversation behind her with half an ear.

“ _ So what brought this on _ ,” Jack says, after a while. “ _ Am I missin’ a coming out party? _ ”

“No, nothing like that. I just—”

Riley looks up, and finds Mac’s gaze on her.

“I just realized it’d been a secret for so long, but that maybe it didn’t need to be.”

There’s a moment of silence, and then she hears Jack speak again.

“ _ You know I’m always here for you, man _ .”

“Yeah,” Mac agrees.

“ _ You can tell the whole damn world, and if anyone gives you shit, tell me and I’ll break their fucking legs. _ ”

Mac smiles again, soft and stupid and—

In love.

“Yeah.”

The pop of gunfire echoes over the phone, and they both straighten.

“ _ Shit, looks like we’re gonna have our daily fifteen minutes of terror right around now. I’ve gotta go, but remember that I love you man, and next time, don’t go months without calling, you hear me? _ ”

“Yeah,” Mac says. After a moment. “I love you, too.”

“ _ Pass my love to Riley, too! Also tell her to bully you into calling me more often! _ ”

More gunfire, and then the line goes dead.

Mac and Riley’s eyes meet, and Mac offers, “Jack sends his love.”

“Yeah, thanks, I got that.”

“Just making sure.”

“Uh-huh.”

He offers Riley her phone back, and she takes it.

They’re still holding hands.

He’s looking into her eyes.

“You didn’t tell him how you felt,” she says.

“I did,” he says. “I love Jack, but by the time he left, I wasn’t in love with him anymore, and telling people you used to be in love with them has never seemed like a particularly productive activity to me.”

She swallows, and his free hand falls on top of hers.

“You said I was bad at keeping secrets,” Mac says, “but I’ve been keeping two.”

“Uhh,” Riley says, very eloquently.

“And you told me I should tell the person I love how I feel about them.”

Was that what Riley had said?

Riley feels like that’s not what she’d said.

“Apparently when I’ve got a bit of a crush, it’s obvious to the whole world, but when I’m really knee-deep in love, nobody can tell.”

Riley can feel her heart in her throat.

She should say something.

Mac is going out with Desi.

She likes Desi!

They’re friends.

Family.

She likes Desi.

She means to say  _ What about Desi? _

But instead, she says—

“I love you.”

Mac blinks, a bit blind-sided.

“I mean—”

“I love you, too,” he interrupts, smiling his stupid Mac smile. His thumb is still tracing over the back of her hand. “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” she says without thinking.

He leans forward, over where she has fallen back against the arm of the couch, lowering himself, and—

“Wait, what about Desi?”

She stops him with a hand on his chest when his lips are like.

A fucking inch from hers.

If she had just realized this like.

A second later.

They could have kissed.

Fucking.

Mac pulls back.

“You’re right,” he says.

He slips her phone from her hand, and starts dialing what she can only assume is Desi’s number.

“Mac, are you dialing your girlfriend? Who is in the middle of a super dangerous mission? On my phone? To break up with her?”

Mac blinks.

Looks down at the phone.

“No?”

She plucks her phone from his hand.

Looks down at the first seven numbers of Desi’s phone number.

Looks back at Mac.

“Those are the first seven nubrers of the American ambassador to Syria’s phone number. The US should be taking more Syrian refugees.”

Riley laughs, shaking her head, and pulls him down on top of her.

He comes down with an oof, driving the breath from her lungs, but—

It feels good, all of him covering all of her.

This is not a friend hug.

But it’s more okay than a kiss, which is what they would have done if he had kept on being his stupid Mac-y self over her face.

She pulls him closer, and his hand comes to her hair, threading through it and scratching at her scalp and fucking.

Fucking Mac.

“Did you know that evidence shows that polyamorous relationships are more emotionally healthy than monogamous ones?”

“I’m not sharing,” Riley says, and then she realizes what she just said. “I mean, this wouldn’t be poly, man, we’d just be cheating.”

She can feel him smile against her hair.

“Is that what you meant?”

“Yes.”

He laughs, and it feels good, vibrating through her.

They fall into a comfortable sort of silence, in which she threads her fingers through his hair, and he threads his fingers through hers.

At some point, he pulled the tie from her hair, and it’s now spilling all over the side of the couch.

“If you’ve loved me for so long, why did you go out with her?” she asks.

There’s a long moment of silence before he pushes himself up, off of her chest, and looks down at her.

“Because I’m a coward,” he says. “Did you know I’ve never asked anyone out?”

“So when she asked you out, you said yes?”

“I knew myself well enough to know I would never be able to ask you out.”

She doesn’t ask how long.

She doesn’t want to know.

How long had she been making excuses to herself, wallowing in her own misery, when she could have been with Mac.

He’s so close, his eyes so blue, lips inches from her own.

“Desi’s great,” she says, staring at his lips.

“Yeah, but she’s no you.”

She pushes him off of her, and he goes tumbling to the ground with a crash.

“Ow,” he says.

She looks resolutely at the ceiling.

“Sorry. If you were that close for any longer, I was going to kiss you.”

Mac honest-to-God giggles.

She frowns, and then twists to look at his face.

He grins dopily up at her.

“You want to kiss me,” he says.

She snorts.

“I’ve spent the last hour when you were rubbing your thumb on the back of my hand all the other places I want your thumb.”

It takes Riley a moment to realize what she said.

Then she scrambles to her feet and starts shoving her stuff in her backpack.

This is Mac’s fault.

Saying he loves her.

Making her feel all comfortable around him.

“I’m gonna go.”

“Makes sense.”

She heaves her backpack over her shoulder and he catches it before it falls open and spills all of its shit all over the floor, and zips it up.

She strides over to the door, through it.

He stops at the door.

“You’re too drunk to drive,” he says.

“I’ll walk.”

“Walking drunk is more deadly than driving drunk. Call an uber.”

She stops, and now that there’s like ten feet between them, turns back.

His face is so dopey and soft and oh god why is she leaving this is so stupid and—

“I will,” she says.

He smiles, with his whole damn face.

Fuck.

“Call me when you—”

When you break up with your girlfriend?

What the fuck is wrong with her?

Oh my God.

“You don’t have to break up with Desi because of me,” she says.

“I kind of do,” he says.

Her heart pounds in her chest.

“You don’t,” she repeats. “But if you do, call me after? Oh God Desi’s gonna kill me.”

“Desi’s not the jealous type.”

Riley stops, mouth half open.

“Not me. Her previous girlfriend cheated on her, and they’re still close.”

“Cool. Cool.”

She wanders a bit back.

“Alright, bye.”

She is half turned away when he speaks again.

“Can I just come to your apartment?”

At the look in his eyes, she almost just walks back up those stairs and fucks him against the door.

“After?”

Thankfully, that’s when her uber shows up, fastest uber in history, and she strides towards it.

She tosses her bag in the passenger side, turns back, and shouts back at him, “Yes!”

And then doesn’t look back at him for a response.

Two hours later, she gets a text from Desi.

Hands shaking, she takes the phone in her hands.

(She’s gonna die she’s gonna die she’s gonna die.)

_ So _

Another.

_ Mac just told me he’s been more in love with you than me for the entire time we’ve been dating _

A third.

_ Which I think counts as cheating, so I stole a six-pack of his favorite beer and now I’m going to embarrass him to his new girlfriend _

A fourth.

_ So here’s a picture of him in his Spiderman boxers _

Accompanied by a picture of Mac posing in a pair of just.

Very tight boxers.

Nothing else.

Just the boxers.

Are boxers always this short?

This tight?

Do boxers always have such a prominent bulge?

She supposes that the design is technically the spiderman logo.

But.

Fuck if Riley wouldn’t have noticed if Desi hadn’t pointed it out in advance.

_ He has the whole avengers, and also all of the Justice League. _

_ Here’s his Wonder Woman boxers. _

Yep.

He’s flexing in this one.

Looking smug.

Cool.

There’s a flurry of more pictures, and indeed, Mac does seem to have boxers for each member of The Avengers and The Justice League.

_ He’s your problem now _

_ Good luck _

Her doorbell rings.

Her phone buzzes again.

_ And _

Three dots bounce ominously at the bottom of the screen.

_ I hope you know that I don’t think this should change anything between us _

Riley smiles.

_ I love you, too _ she types out.

Then, after a moment of hesitation—

_ I’m really sorry about all this _

She makes her way over to the door, looks through the peephole.

Riley is standing there, bouquet of duct tape roses in his hands, grinning like an idiot.

_ It is what it is _

_ I’ll survive _

_ Knock him dead _

Riley smiles down at her phone, and then tosses it onto the side table.

She pulls the door open, and before Mac can get a word, pulls him inside and she kisses him for all she’s got.

She’s got a year of sexual tension to work through.

She slams him up against the door, and the sound he makes against her lips is just the fucking greatest.

The duct tape flowers fall beside her phone and his hands wrap around her back, pulling her close to his chest.

“Hi,” she says, when she finally pulls away, both of their chests heaving, and smooths her hands across his chest.

“Hey,” he says, winded.

“You look good.”

“You always look amazing.”

This is a dead lie, she’s in sweats and her makeup is a mess because she had a bit of a cry earlier, and her hair.

Her hair.

Let’s not talk about her hair.

“Desi texted me,” she says.

His eyebrows raise, face a little apprehensive.

He was apparently not as certain about his  _ Desi’s not the jealous type _ as he had looked.

Great.

Awesome.

“Sent me some pictures.”

He laughs.

She slides her hand down his chest, slides it under his shirt, tucks it into his waistband.

He shakes his head, still laughing.

“It’s not weird,” he says. “Desi’s the one who’s weird about this.”

She pulls back his waistband, glances down.

A sea of golden w’s stare back at her.

She looks up at him, and he smiles down at her.

“What do you think?”

She laces her hands behind his neck, and pulls him down to her.

“I love it,” she whispers against his lips, and he smiles against her lips.

“I love you,” he says. Then, after a moment in which he did not close the distance between them. “Did you know that—”

Riley smashes their lips together, and he shuts up.

She guesses she’ll just have to be the one to take the initiative in this relationship.

She’s kind of okay with that.

**Author's Note:**

> Mac's did you know there at the end would have been this quote:
> 
> "If you need to stop an asteroid, you call Superman. If you need to solve a mystery, you call Batman. But if you need to end a war, you call Wonder Woman.” (credited to Gail Simone, one of the many Wonder Woman authors.)
> 
> Considering what Mac's job is, I suspect he'd feel quite a connection to Wonder Woman.


End file.
